have you ever thought about what nature
could teach us to make better technology
actually I haven't until I came across
the bionic Learning Network the bionic
Learning Network of festo is a really
cool thing it is a collaboration of
festo a worldwide leader in automation
Tech technology as well as several
universities research institutes and
small Innovative
companies within this Bic Learning
Network totally different people come
together they for example biologists or
people who studied robotics or people
who studied Aerospace Dynamics or
something they designers Engineers their
researchers all these people come
together and they're United by one
thought they are fascinated by Nature
they want to learn from nature and they
want to get inspired by nature and this
is exactly why I joined the bionic
Learning Network you know sometimes I
sit at my desk and my mind is just empty
but as soon as I go out to a forest for
a little stroll or if I go hiking into
the mountains my creativity is just
boosted and this already starts if I
look at these pictures I directly get
ideas for new projects and maybe this is
true for you as well and as I get
inspired the engineers of the the bionic
Learning Network got also
inspired here for example they looked at
the mantay and they built this beautiful
underwater vehicle it is a robot that
can swim and dive and as you can see
it's in it's inspired by the mantay and
it has this very beautiful and natural
movement you can attach several sensors
to its belly and then send it out to a
reef and there it can measure data and
because it has this natural movement it
does not bring any disturbance
into the ecosystem and it doesn't bring
any noise into it and so it delivers
really beautiful
data or for example Birds who didn't
want to fly once in his life and though
the engineers got inspired by their
hering G they really wanted to
understand how birds can do this amazing
thing of flying and they looked into how
birds can move their wings and they
built this lightweight constructed um
bioin fired robot that can fly as a
actual Herring Gull and here the the
engineers really managed to decipher the
bird's
flight these are just two examples of a
whole series of bioinspired robots but I
didn't want to speak about bioinspired
robots I wanted to speak about um the
production of the future and actually I
don't think that we will have little
monkey robots sit at an assembly line in
the future still there's a lot that we
can learn from nature
during Evolution almost every process
was optimized for millions of years for
Energy Efficiency for example or for
example for lightweight construction or
maybe function integration so these are
things that we really can learn from
nature however these words are kind of
wake and now I want to become a little
bit more specific and therefore I want
to look into how human nature can shape
production of the
future so if we ask what will the future
of production look like we first have to
look at the past and here are some
pictures maybe some of you remember the
very old computers that were so slow now
computers are way faster and the same is
true for machines at the beginning
machines were pretty simple they were
only able to conduct one step and that
was pretty slow and nowadays machines
are so much more complex they can
conduct a whole series of different
steps and they're very very fast and
already in the six more formulated his
law and made the whole thing
scientifically that he said that the
transistor density on a chip doubles
about every 2 years and actually during
the last 50 years this law proved to be
perfectly correct and so we can assume
that this will also hold in the future
so computers and machines will become
faster in the future but what about the
humans that have to interact with these
machines do they become faster actually
I don't know if humans became faster in
the last 50 years but what I know is
that on average the employees especially
in Germany become older so in
2020 every third employee will be
between 50 and 64 years of age and on
the one hand this is a big Advantage
these people are highly experienced
they're well trained and they're well
educated on the other hand the visual
sense decreases with age the auditory
sense decreases the body gets weaker and
the reaction times become slower so
while on the one hand we have the
computers and machines that become
faster on the other hands we have the
humans that become slower and this is a
discrepancy we have to deal with in the
future so if the machines become faster
and humans become slower there's a
higher chance for accidents for
collisions and this was one concern that
we wanted to deal with in the bionic
Learning Network and we thought we want
to guarantee a safe human machine
interaction therefore we came up with
the bionic handling
assistant here's the bionic handling
assistant and you might maybe directly
can see that it's inspired by our
elephant's trunk it can move in all kind
of directions it has three segments that
are air filled it has a hand AIS and it
has a Grier at the
front as its natural role model this
bionic handling assistant is quite
strong but it's still very gentle at the
same time it's a lightweight
construction and produced with rapid
prototyping by this it's already pretty
safe to interact with humans but further
it is a pneumatic system that means that
it's driven with air only and since air
is compressible this system cannot hurt
any humans and normally a lot of
machines in an assembly line have to be
within a cage that they do not hurt
humans but as you can see here we have a
safe human machine interaction and the
people can directly interact with the
machine and therefore this machine can
for example be used to hand over tools
to a worker or for example in this case
an Apple so the first thing was that we
wanted to have a safe human machine
interaction the second point was that we
wanted to have smart and intuitive
control and therefore we came up with
the robotino that you can see here the
robotino is a platform where students
and pupils could get interested in
robots and try around play around start
programming complex robots and this
robot is controlled with a remote
control that is so simple that every
pupil can play around with it so this
was one first step into the intuitive
control further we have touch play uh
touch screens or for example we have
voice control then further we included a
little um camera into the tip of the
elephant's nose and with this it can
detect some objects and by this do some
steps like picking objects
autonomously but what would be more
intuitive than using our normal gestures
and our normal hand movements to control
a machine and therefore we came up with
the EXO hand the EXO hand is a robotic
hand that I can pull over my hand and I
then can move my fingers
I can move them quite normally and here
there are several sensors that detect
this movement further there are
actuators that can also move my fingers
so I have a two-way interaction here and
the first scenario that we can use that
for is the one that you can see
here here alas knub the starter of the
project is wearing the EXO hand he moves
his hands
freely and the movement is recorded by
the exo hand and is then transferred to
a second EXO hand that is attached to a
robot arm by moving his hand he can then
easily control the robot
hand but there's one clue about it so as
soon as the robot hand grasps an object
it feels the resistance and this
resistance is then back projected to the
robot hand at the worker so as soon as
the robot grabs an object the worker can
feel that he grasp an object and this
system is so sensitive that he can even
identify several different objects and
with this system we have a object
manipulation from a safe distance which
is for example very helpful in um
dangerous environments or for example in
outer
space this is only one scenario the
other scenario is that for example the
data that is recorded by the hand is
directly sent back to the hand and for
this it's used in a assembly line for
example this older worker he has to do a
tiing job and has to repeat it very
often and it's exhausting but now the
EXO hand um detects its movement and
sends it back and by this we have a
force amplification and by this the same
exhausting Stu s are not that tiring and
not that exhausting
anymore having the EXO hand we started a
collaboration with the University of
tuban at the University of tubingen the
doctors treat patients after stroke
after stroke most of the brain is
functioning normally and the hand is
functioning normally still a lot of
patients kind of forgot how to move
their hand and they have to learn that
again they have to do a rehabilitation
and there they have to go to the clinics
and practice every
day um and at the clinics they combine a
e system and this eich system records
when the patient wants to move his hand
this data is sent to a computer and this
is then sent to the EXO hand and the EXO
hand actually then moves the hand of the
patient so the work or the patient
thinks about moving his hand and the EXO
hand moves his hand so there's a
positive feedback and this positive
feedback loop helps patients to learn
faster and by this the whole
Rehabilitation process is increased
further the EXO hand is portable and is
lightweight so patients can take it back
home with them and instead just
practicing once a day in the clinics
they can practice a second time at home
or a third time at home and by this
training effects are really increased
so after that project with the
University of tubing and we thought
actually such a e system is cool but
could it be used to control a complex
machine can we build a brain computer
interface that is used to control a
complex machine and we used this brain
computer interface I put it over my head
and then it records my brain signals
every time I think about something
there's electrical current running
through the nerve ner fibers of my brain
and this can be detected by this e
system after applying it to the skull it
then sends the data to um the computer
via Bluetooth and the BL and the
computer has to learn these patterns
therefore my colleague that you can see
on this slide Nadin kha she programmed a
software that learns these data and
classifies this data and the data is
then used to control a game that you can
see here so on the left side the girl is
controlling the pedal with brain power
only while on the other side there's a
guy sitting moving its pedal with
muscular
power so actually this was a proof of
concept we wanted to test if it's
possible to control such a machine with
brain power only and yes it is possible
so so far I spoke about projects that we
are already working on so this is kind
of the future 3.0 but what's coming up
next what's about the future
4.0 and actually there are still jobs
that are exhausting and that are tiring
and that that are dangerous for humans
to do or they're just too fast to be
done by humans and although we now have
um smarter and more intuitive and safe
human machine interaction it would be
good if some of these exhaust ing jobs
could be done by machines alone and
obviously we can control and pre-program
machines to do the jobs we don't want to
do but it would be way better if
machines would learn to do these jobs in
an optimized way if they would do it in
an energy efficient way and in a fast
way further it would be really helpful
if one machine stops functioning it
could tell the others hey I'm not
working anymore could you please take
over my job so if the machines could
commun communicate with each other
actually um they again could learn to do
the new jobs in an optimized way and by
this production costs would decrease by
this um production times would decrease
and this would allow everyone of us to
order personalized products so as I said
here we want to have learning systems
and we want to have communicating
systems and there I can come back to the
beginning of my
talk actually every
human like us or every animal is
communicating and is learning so we can
come back and learn from nature
about communication and about learning
and therefore we started the aqua jelly
project
maybe you directly see it that these
underwater robots are inspired by
jellyfish and like a swarm of animals
they communicate with each other with
these small blue blinking
lights they for example talk about their
position and they organize where which
one is and they don't bump into each
other further they communicate about
their energy status so for example they
they organize Which object goes to the
charging station at what time
so I hope I was able to show you that we
already learned a lot from humans and
from nature about how humans can
interact and communicate with machines
but also about how machines can
communicate with machines but if we want
to build further better sustainable and
human friendly robotics we really should
look into nature nature per se but also
human nature so actually I really would
say next time you go out hiking um or
you go to the mountains or maybe you go
diving keep your eyes open and get
inspired from nature you can learn a lot
thank you very much
[Applause]